British tabloid "News of the World" closed on July 7th, after 168 years of publication. The closure of this news paper is a sad day, indeed--both in terms of the end of a nearly two-centuries-long publication, and in the steep, seemingly irrevocable decline of journalsitic standards. But this is, in another view, far from the end: it is the beginning of a horror for the Murdochs. What seems like a one-off discovery incident leading to closure is actually a very complicated and torrid affair--not very English at all.
Phone-hacking allegations against the NoW go as far back as 2005, where it was first purported that Prince William's voicemail had been hacked into. That was the first bullet--several more followed, and NoW seemed adept at dodging them all by paying off angry claimants and bribing police officers. But it seems to have well and truly bit the bullet this go-around.
I, for one, am enthralled by how this story is coming out. An avid fan of "All the President's Men" (who couldn't be, with a dashing young Robert Redford?!) I always wondered how it'd be to have seen the events of the Watergate scandal slowly surface to the public. In a way, the NoW phone hacking scandal is the U.K.'s version of Watergate. Both scandals used the same subtext for their actions: the hunt for private information. Both scandals had very poweful, egotistical men at their apexes; Rupert Murdoch claimed that today, when he'd been brought in front of the Commons' Culture, Sport, and Media committee, was the most humble day of his life. Uh, duh. That's what happens when you sanction violations into people's privacy just to have juicy headlines and hefty pockets.
I don't buy any of the I-didn't-do-it-my-subordinates-did shtick. I fail to understand how someone as powerful as Rupert Murdoch would have been content to delegate such a major, consequential decision--to phone-hack or to not phone-hack--to anyone else. Nixon certainly knew of the Watergate tapes, and denied them with just as much conviction as Murdoch's denials hold.
The scandal is unfolding very juicily. As a spectator, I'm both excited and agitated. A slew of big names have resigned recently--including Sir Paul Stephenson, chief of Metropolitan Police; John Yates, Assistan Commissioner of the Met Police; and Rebekah Brooks, News International's Chief Executive. All these cause my eyebrows to go way, way into my hairline. Is there a conspiracy here--was Sir Paul being paid to not investigate NoW's actions in the past? (It's known that Ms. Brooks paid the police for information when NoW was under her editorship.) I just truly hope that these folks are denied their benefit packages. (Why else would they resign, I wonder, unless they wanted to avoid being stripped of dignity, power, and a bunch of money? Two out of three is bad enough.)
There is no doubt that Prime Minister David Cameron and his Parliament need to take action, now. This case should be made an example of, so few wish to ever attempt such a stupid thing. Isn't there some sort of journalistic code, or a clause in the Great Big Book of Rules of the World that journalistic malpractice leads to a hefty punishment, like a date with the guillotine or some sort? I definitely wanted that for the Watergate wimps after watching "President's Men."
Maybe this isn't the U.K.'s version of Watergate after all, though. Just a continuation of how each industry created manages to fall prey to its own greed and lust for power and basically implodes as a result of the disastrous decisions made in pursuit of those two. Watergate was the political manifestation; Enron the monetary manifestation; and NoW the informational manifestation.
Whatever the case, it's certain now that the Murdochs are between a rock and a hard place. How they will worm themselves out of this remains to be seen. Keep your eyes and ears peeled. And don't watch FOX News. (It's controlled by News Corporation, which is owned by--you guessed it--Rupert Murdoch. They aren't airing coverage of this unfolding controversy.)
P.S. for anyone confused about exactly what the hell happened, go here. Gotta love the BBC.
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